


Dear My Most Hated Past

by GingerAle3



Series: TMA Hurt/Comfort Week [6]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (Very Slight), (not actual vomit but like literal puking of horrors), ALL THE BAD STUFF IS TEMPORARY, Blood, Body Dysmorphia, Canon-Typical Worms (The Magnus Archives), Coughing, Cradled, Delirium / Confusion, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), Slight Suffocation, Temporary Blindness, The Apocalypse is Cancelled, Unconsciousness, Vomiting, Weird Eyes (not injured just weird), but now there's consequences, content warnings for all the entities. all of em., injuries, it's not as bad as it sounds, lots of passing out. like a lot a lot, love as the antithesis of fear, tooth injury (mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26183065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerAle3/pseuds/GingerAle3
Summary: Faced with Martin before he can read the last lines of the ritual, Jon finds the strength to break the compulsion he's under and destroys the fake statement he was reading from. As he does so though, he falls unconscious. It seems that now he's broken ties with The Eye, every other entity that's marked him is rushing to either claim him or kill him all at once. Martin just want them both to make it through this.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: TMA Hurt/Comfort Week [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893973
Comments: 14
Kudos: 188





	Dear My Most Hated Past

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the TMA Hurt/Comfort Week on tumblr (themagnuswriters)
> 
> 29/8 - Saturday  
> Delirium/Connfusion / Cradled
> 
> WOW DID THIS EVER GET OUT OF HAND HOPE YOU LIKE IT BC IM NOW VERY TIRED
> 
> (Title from Seasons Die One After Another by Jayn)

He couldn’t let Elias win again.

In spite of what the statement told him to do, in spite of the warning about how much resisting it would hurt, Jon fought back against every word that spilled from his lips. He refused to let a single one of them come easily, dragging out the statement for as long as possible, trying the entire time to shut his eyes or loosen his iron grip on the papers in front of him.

How long was he there? It felt like it could have been hours, but it also felt like it could have been days, weeks. Had it gone on forever? Had there ever been a time before the pain, before these words so slowly dragged out of him like pulling teeth? Some distant part of his mind vaguely recalled Case #0092302. A bin bag completely filled with teeth, with the same tooth, and he wondered vaguely whether it was a single tooth multiplied, or the same tooth pulled from the same person again and again and again, a modern-day Prometheus. He wondered if this was how they would have felt.

It was difficult to shake himself free of such musings, so much easier to focus on curiosity and knowledge than stopping the words that had sped up slightly as he was distracted, taking their opportunity to rush out while his metaphorical back was turned. By this point, he could recognise what was happening, feel the power laced through his words, and it was all he could do to not give into a chanting rhythm that tugged at the corners of his mind.

He couldn’t stop it. After everything, he wasn’t strong enough to stop himself from destroying the world. Gertrude died trying to stop the rituals, Martin had gone through hell with Peter Lukas, Tim and Sasha and Gerry had ended up dead due to the machinations surrounding everything, and he was going to be the one whose weakness meant it was all for nothing.

Vaguely, distantly, he heard a door open with a bang. A voice was calling for him. There were only two lines left and the power was thrumming through him. Feet were pounding on the stairs, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a figure charge into the room. There were hands on the sides of his face, dragging his gaze from the paper, but it was too late. He knew the words, they were on the tip of his tongue, screaming to be released.

“I...Open-” His gaze locked with the figure in the room with him. With Martin. The last two words wavered, just a little.

“Th...The…” Martin was crying. He seemed to be yelling something but Jon couldn’t hear a word over the roaring in his ears and the crash of thunder somewhere above him. Green lightning flashed outside, throwing his pale and terrified face into sharp relief.

Jon loved him. The thought seemed to come from nowhere, slicing through the throbbing amalgam of fear filling his skull. For just a moment, he remembered that yes, there had been a world before the pain and fear of this ritual, he had a whole life before that. He remembered the way his grandmother’s house always smelled faintly of cheap potpourri, he remembered stacks of second hand books and the feeling of sea spray in his face. He remembered university, and Georgie, and the heat of stage lights on his face as he sang and the way the Admiral rumbled slightly as he purred. He remembered the Institute, mostly bad, some good.The bright colours of the floral shirts Tim always wore, the sound of the real Sasha’s voice, scratchy and grainy from the tape recorder. He remembered his arguments with Melanie, and finding out Basira thought he was funny, and sprawling across the godawful couch in the staff lounge with Daisy as she tried to convince him of the merit of The Archers.

He remembered Martin.

The sprouting memories in his mind grew, twisting together and pushing up against the roiling, screaming compulsion, and he focused on Martin. He thought of Martin bringing him tea. Martin nervously asking if he’d seen a dog. Martin admitting he’d lied on his CV, and volunteering to confront Elias, and tearfully apologising for leaving them in the tunnels, and mocking him for asking if he was a ghost, and dragging him out of the office to eat, and with each memory the thing, the love inside of him grew larger and stronger and even as the fear screamed its defiance, Jon screamed right back, he would not finish this ritual, even if it killed him-

The last thing he was aware of was the sound of ripping paper.

-

“Jon!” As the ripping of paper cut through the noise of the thunder above them, Jon’s eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped forward into Martin’s arms. The thunder grew louder, from a rumble to a roar, from a roar to a scream, and Martin curled around Jon, held him to his chest and wrapped himself around him as much as he possibly could. The scream went on and on, louder and louder, the glass of the windows rattling and the house seeming to shake all around them. Finally though, it dissipated, seeming to vanish like mist in the sunlight. All was quiet.

Cautiously, Martin cracked open an eye he couldn’t even remember closing. Sunlight was coming through the nearby window, the storm apparently having vanished, and the house was silent. Looking down at the paper Jon had been reading from, he saw that it had finally slipped completely from his hands, ripped entirely into two pieces, splitting the words apart and seeming to break their compulsion. As Martin watched, the words seemed to start to bleed, ink welling up from their lines and curves and slowly spreading to cover the starkly white paper. When there was no part of it left unsullied by the ink, it started to disintegrate at the edges, pieces of it breaking off, floating away and dissolving to nothing in the air. Before long, the statement was completely gone.

Looking down at where Jon was still curled against his chest, Martin shook his shoulder slightly.

“Jon? Jon, it’s gone. It’s safe, you did it!” He laughed slightly out of sheer relief, but it trailed off quickly when Jon didn’t respond. “...Jon?” Tilting Jon’s head up, his heart stopped. The other man’s eyes were still closed, and his face was far paler than it should have been, with the only exception being two long lines of pitch-black ink streaking down his face from the corners of his eyes. Panic shot through him as he remembered the last time he’d seen Jon so pale, so still, and he desperately pressed his fingers to the side of his neck.

A moment passed.

Then another.

Then, finally, he felt the slight flutter of his pulse.

Martin could’ve sobbed. The situation was still horrible, Jon still wasn’t waking up and had still nearly been used to end the world, but he wasn’t dead. Martin could work with this. God knows he’d worked with worse in the past.

It took almost no effort to lift Jon from the sofa he’d been recording on, and a voice in the back of Martin’s head worried about how skinny he was for what was far from the first time. They hadn’t made the bed that morning, and looking at the rumpled sheets sent a pang through his chest as he remembered how they’d woken up. Grey light had spilled in through the curtains, and they had stayed there for at least an hour after they woke up, curled together and quietly murmuring back and forth about whatever crossed their minds. As he carefully laid Jon down and tucked him in, it all seemed so far away. After a moment of hesitation, he also tucked some pillows under his feet to keep them raised. True, this wasn’t the exact sort of situation that that medical advice would be given for, but ‘passed out from the strain of resisting the compulsion of an ancient fear god to end the world’ probably wasn’t on WebMD.

For a while, Martin just stood there watching over him, some part of his mind vainly hoping that after a minute or two his eyes would open and everything would be fine. As the minutes ticked by and Jon still didn’t move though, he knew there were things he had to do. They had plenty of tinned soup downstairs, so he didn’t need to worry about finding something that was easy for Jon to eat when he woke up (‘if he woke up’ chimed in a treacherous voice in the back of his head), and he knew there were a few other statements left if he needed them. He should probably read through them first though, just to be certain that Elias hadn’t sent any backups.

Pressing the back of his hand to Jon’s forehead, he found it slightly warmer than he’d like, so headed to the bathroom, bringing back a large bowl of cool water and two cloths. After dipping both in the water, he folded over the first and carefully laid it across Jon’s forehead, hoping it would keep the temperature down. With the other, he carefully started cleaning his face, wiping away the black streaks spilling down his cheeks. Once they were gone, he could finally get a good look at Jon’s face.

In short, he looked like hell. His face was several shades paler than usual, taking on an almost grey tint, and the bags under his eyes that had been slowly fading over their weeks in the safehouse seemed to have reappeared all at once. He was starting to sweat from the fever, and even unconscious he didn’t seem to be at peace. It was subtle, hard to notice at a glance, but there was a furrow appearing between his brows and his eyes were squeezing closed a little tighter than they should be.

As Martin kept an eye on him, he seemed to become progressively more agitated. His head twitched from side-to-side and he began muttering.

For a few minutes, it was just single sporadic words, ‘no’, ‘please’, ‘Martin’ - at that point Martin had taken his hand in his own and quietly whispered reassuring words to him - but as the minutes passed, his voice became stronger and clearer.

And then his eyes opened.

Something about them looked different somehow, and Martin’s stomach dropped as he realised they seemed to be covered in pale clouds, just like Peter’s used to be. Just like his own sometimes were when he looked in the mirror during that time. Jon’s gaze was unfocused, darting around with an expression of absolute fear, seeming to pass over Martin entirely.

“Martin? Martin, where are you?” he called, starting to try sitting up. Martin pressed a hand to Jon’s chest, gently pressing him back to the mattress. It was worryingly easy to do.

“Jon, Jon I’m right here.” Jon’s eyes spun around again, still passing straight over him and, it seemed, everything else in the room.

“Martin? I can’t- I can’t see you Martin. Please-” His arms closed around himself, clutching at opposite arms as he weakly curled in on himself. “Please don’t leave me. Please…” He was crying by that point, tears running down his face for a moment before seeming to evaporate into a thick white fog, and his quickening breaths emitted steam as though the room was freezing cold.

Martin’s heart broke a little and without really considering what he was doing, he pulled Jon into a firm embrace. For a moment, he tensed at his grip, even seeming like he would pull away for a moment. But slowly, tentatively his arms raised in turn, moving to grip at the back of Martin’s jumper and leaning his head into Martin’s shoulder.

“I’m right here Jon. I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m right here. I’m not leaving you. You’re not alone.” The last words almost seemed to coat his tongue, covering it in a numb, fuzzy feeling, and Jon’s head snapped back abruptly. Alarmed, Martin pulled away to see what had happened, only to see Jon’s face raised towards the ceiling, eyes completely white and mouth wide open, erupting with what looked like a tornado of white clouds as the sound of howling winds filled the air. After a long moment, the stream slowed, then gentled, then, finally stopped. Jon collapsed back into Martin’s arms, weakly coughing up a few last, small clouds of mist, before falling unconscious again.

This was late in the afternoon, but night was approaching by the time Jon’s condition changed again. Martin was still sitting by his bed, quietly reading a book to try and distract himself from worrying about Jon. He didn’t notice the slight change in his breathing for a long moment, until he looked over and saw Jon’s eyes snap open and nearly leapt back in surprise. They were pitch-black. Not just irises, sclera as well, and didn’t even seem to be reflecting light from the lamp on the bedside table. As though the entire eyes were absorbing light itself. Then he spoke again. His voice had lost its former strength, and he was reduced to mumbling all over again.

“Can’t...where? Just...nothing…” Martin reached out and carefully, oh so carefully touched Jon’s wrist. The result was as though he’d touched him with a live wire. A jolt rushed through Jon, and he rocketed away from Martin as fast as his seemingly exhausted body could get him. Not all that fast as it turns out, which was probably a good thing as he slammed into the wall that the bed was pressed up against. With a small yelp of pain, he scrambled across it frantically, as though he were trying to feel his way through a solid wall, before pressing his back against it and staring wildly out at the room, chest heaving as he started hyperventilating.

“Jon!” Martin called to him, desperately hoping he Jon would react to his voice better than he’d reacted to his touch. His gaze snapped to the area where Martin was now stood, a hint of confusion cutting through his abject fear.

“M...Martin?” His voice was no more than a whisper, like he wasn’t sure whether it was more frightening to be alone or to be heard by whatever hallucination seemed to be scaring him so much. Martin decided it was best to match his tone, try and keep him calm.

“I’m here Jon.” he whispered back. The look on Jon’s face shifted, now portraying equal parts fear and despair.

“Martin, you have to run. I think there’s something in the dark. I don’t know what it wants I- I can’t see anything, I can’t See anything, I don’t-” His fear seemed to choke him as Martin turned over his words in his head. First fog and a fear of being alone, then black eyes and darkness. Martin felt like he was beginning to get an idea of what was happening and maybe, just maybe, how he could help.

“Jon, you’re right, there’s something in the darkness.” Jon whimpered slightly, cringing at the confirmation of his fears, but Martin didn’t stop talking. “As a matter of fact, there’s lots of things. Right now, the bed you’re sat on is in the dark. So is the house we’ve been living in these past weeks. So am I.” The fear on Jon’s face seemed to fade into confusion as he considered these facts. Martin continued.

“Are you scared of us?” Jon paused, thinking over his answer carefully, and Martin tried not to take that too personally. The circumstances weren’t exactly normal after all. Finally, he spoke up.

“...no?” His answer was more of a question than a statement, like a small child answering a teacher’s question, terrified that they’d be wrong. Even though he knew Jon couldn’t see it, Martin gave him an encouraging smile.

“Exactly. I know it’s scary that you can’t see right now, but it doesn’t mean you’re in danger. There may or may not be things in the dark that may or may not want to harm you, but there are definitely things in the dark that want to protect you. Things that love you.” Slowly Jon was untensing, his hands sliding from the wall to the now-rumpled duvet beneath him, tangling his fingers into the soft fabric. Martin decided to take it one step further. “Can I hold your hand?”

There was a long pause. Then, slowly and shakily, Jon pulled his hand away from the duvet and, by inches, reached it out towards Martin. His fingers were spread, but his entire body was trembling, as though he expected some horrible monster in the darkness to rip his arm off if he reached out too far. Martin let his fingers brush lightly against the tips of Jon’s, letting him go when he flinched back an inch on instinct. After a moment of hesitation though, Jon stretched his arm back out, finally meeting Martin’s hand with his own and lacing them together.

Jon gave a weak smile, before his shaking intensified. The void-like colour of his eyes spread outwards and upwards like veins until they reached his hairline. It rushed through his hair and for a moment, his head looked like little more than a silhouette. Finally though, the darkness leaked upwards out of his eyes, the darkness retreated upwards, into his hair, before seeming to flood out the ends of it. Once it had detached, it flowed across his body and clothes in pieces, like the shadows of birds flying high overhead, before rushing across the sheets and into the lamplight. The lamp glowed brighter and for a moment, Martin thought the bulb would blow, but instead the shadow on the sheets simply faded away, seemingly unable to withstand the light.

Meanwhile, Jon slumped away from the wall like his strings had been cut, and Martin was able to gently maneuver him back into the bed, seemingly having a moment to think about what had just happened. The Lonely and The Dark, both seeming to manifest their fear directly into Jon’s mind within hours of each other, before some part of them physically exited him and he fell back into unconsciousness. Jonah’s “statement” had echoed louder than it should have, some sort of power seeming to let it reach further, so Martin had caught some parts of it before it had shifted into a ritual. Something about Jon being used for the ritual because he had a mark from all of the entities. If he rejected the ritual, maybe his body was now rejecting the marks he’d been given, seemingly starting with the most recent.

As much as that would explain what was happening, Martin hoped he was wrong. If he was right about this, it meant they both had a long task ahead of them.

-

Sadly, it seemed Martin was correct. At about 10 at night, Jon had suddenly given a great twitch, curling into a ball so tight that Martin just knew it had to hurt. He was gasping for breath, seemingly unable to get a complete lungful of air, and Martin was overtaken by a vivid memory of piling tape recorder after tape recorder onto the lid of a coffin and desperately hoping it would bring him back. The Buried. Jon looked as though he was suddenly covered in dust and dirt, and every couple of gasps, he had to stop to give a heaving cough. Having no clue what else to do, Martin did the only thing that seemed to make sense when countering an entity representing claustrophobia.

He scooped Jon up in his arms and carried him outside.

Martin carefully laid Jon on the grass there, quietly whispering into his ear to look up, look at the stars, and Jon’s eyes were wide with wonder and relief, his arms and legs falling wide to the sides as he took a deep breath of clean, cold air.

Only to immediately start coughing.

Martin quickly rolled him onto his side and then onto his hands and knees, rubbing his back and getting the feeling that this was something he was just going to have to ride out. Sure enough, after a long coughing fit and a retching gag, Jon’s mouth opened wide again and out tumbled a practical avalanche of rock and mud and dust. It faded seamlessly into the grass, seemingly swallowed up by the earth beneath it, and Jon collapsed to the side with a deep, calm breath.

Sadly, instead of the several hours they’d had prior, the peace was shattered only minutes later, when Jon had begun choking on blood. He had immediately panicked, looking down at himself and clearly seeing something horrific. His hands had raised to his chest, his arms his legs, touching at them in a frantic way which had quickly descended to pulling and clawing as he muttered about needing to change back, to look right.

That one had taken longer to resolve. Martin was able to grab hold of his wrists and stop him from hurting himself, but he thrashed wildly, flinching away and begging Martin not to look at him. That was what gave Martin the idea.

He tried scooping him into his arms once again, but this time it was a lot more difficult as he was thrashing about and actively trying to pull away from Martin. In the end, with an apology and a reassurance that he was just trying to help, he threw Jon over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. It definitely said something about how far gone Jon was that he didn’t give the slightest hint of indignation at this treatment.

It was a short walk to the bathroom (though made slightly longer by Jon’s continued struggling), but eventually he placed Jon back on his feet and turned him to face the mirror hung over the sink. Jon was still thrashing, not looking at his reflection, so Martin held him by the wrists and spoke.

“Jon. Jon, look in the mirror. Look in the mirror and tell me what you see.” With one last token effort to escape, Jon grudgingly, flinchingly, looked up. And he blinked.

“I see…” He seemed confused, glancing down at his body, before back to the mirror, back and forth several times before staring at the mirror. “I see us.” His voice cracked and he went limp in Martin’s hold, tears of relief gathering in his eyes. “I see me.” The moment was broken by him abruptly leaning over the sink and giving a new meaning to the phrase ‘chucking his guts up’ as Martin grimaced and held back his hair.

Finally seeming to be emptied of The Flesh, he collapsed into a (thankfully not literally) boneless heap against Martin. Back to unconsciousness. As Martin cleaned him up and carried him back to the bed, he wondered how long until the next one appeared, and what it would be.

-

As it turns out, the answers to these questions were ‘less than an hour’ and ‘The Slaughter’ respectively. Martin had gone back to his book eventually, but was less than a page in when Jon tackled him to the floor. For a bizarre second, he was sure that Jon was going to attack him, but instead it was like he was covering him, keeping his head low as he looked around the room. As Martin got a good look at him, his chest clenched. Every one of Jon’s scars had reopened at once and were oozing blood. The tiny circular holes scattered all over him, the large patch of scar tissue on his hand, the narrow but deep scalpel wound in his shoulder, all were slowly dripping with red.

Surprisingly, that one was easy to snap him out of. He cupped Jon’s face in his hands, telling him again and again that he was safe, that no-one was here to hurt him. Jon seemed like he wanted to believe him, but was still hesitant, so Martin kissed him on the forehead and said he would prove it. It was simple enough to do. He simply slid out from under Jon and stood up.

When he realised what he was doing, Jon cried out and tried to yank him back down, but without the element of surprise there was little he could do to stop him. For a moment, he was borderline hysterical, grabbing at Martin’s hand and begging him to get down, but no matter how much Martin hated seeing him like this, he knew it had to be done.

As the seconds passed, slowly giving way to minutes, Jon’s distress slowly shifted into confusion. His desperate glances around, trying to spot invisible assailants, turned to more focused stares as he seemed to wonder how the hell Martin hadn’t been shot yet. He looked up at Martin, confusion clear on his bloodstained face. Martin offered an encouraging smile. After a moment more thought, clinging tightly to Martin’s side, he slowly, slowly stood up. Nothing happened. There was no danger, just the two of them stood together in their room. Safe.

Jon gave a small smile up at Martin, seeming a little sheepish, before flinching in apparent discomfort and raising a hand to his cheek. Frowning, Martin looked closer at the worm scar that seemed to be causing it, only to pull his face back when something popped out of it. It dropped to the floor with a quiet, metallic ‘ding’, leaving the wound behind it resealed, back to an old faded scar. As they looked down at what had popped out, they saw it seemed to be a small, metal bullet. Jon began shifting in discomfort, more and more ‘ding’s ringing out as his worm scars each produced a single identical bullet. His other scars did the same, but in slightly different forms. His burned hand seemed to leak what looked like a blob of plastic explosives, while his stab wounds each produced a long, narrow knife. This continued for every scar he’d collected over the years until he was standing shakily, surrounded by a pile of assorted weapons with all his scars closed back up.

As he slumped back into Martin (who was getting uncomfortably used to catching his passed-out boyfriend), the blood staining the weapons seemed to spread, eating away at them like acid. Eventually, all that was left was a few drops of blood, and those soaked through the floor and into apparent nothingness.

It was, yet again, less than an hour before the next entity reared its ugly head, though thankfully that was still enough time for Martin to get Jon changed out of his now blood-stained clothes. Thankfully, the clothes had taken the worst of it, meaning he didn’t have to change the sheets.

This time, Jon’s eyes opened wide but seemed glassy, vacant. The colour rushed out of his skin, leaving him looking unnaturally pale. He wasn’t panicked like he had been with the others, simply staring up at the ceiling as he spoke a single sentence.

“I should be dead.” Martin wasn’t sure what he even could do about this one. If he told Jon that he wouldn’t die, that would be ineffective, as The End dealt with the inevitability of death. Telling Jon that everything died eventually didn’t seem like it would exactly be helpful either though.

Eventually, he settled for climbing into bed next to Jon, holding his hand and murmuring “I’m glad you’re not.” Jon looked over, saw him by his side, and closed his eyes. He inhaled deeply...then exhaled. With his breath out came a wave of what looked like ashes, scattering into the air and out of sight. His eyes didn’t reopen, but his breathing remained strong. Martin stayed lying next to him, holding his hand and listening to him breathe.

-

And so it went. Martin had finally got some sleep at that point, as the next entity didn’t appear until the next morning, but waking to find Jon in the throes of the hunt wasn’t much fun. Once he had convinced him that they were safe and hidden, miles upon miles from anything and anyone, the claws and fangs he had spontaneously sprouted tumbled away from his hands and mouth, shattering into a fine powder as they each hit the ground.

This time though, Jon didn’t even fall unconscious, instead, his hair started whipping around him like he was caught in a storm and his eyes were the colour of a turbulent sea. Chasing away a fear of The Vast was tricky, as it was a much less solid fear than the others, hard to get a grasp on. Eventually, closing the curtains, bundling Jon up in blankets and helping him to shut the world out for a while seemed to do the trick. His hair settled (albeit now rather messy), his eyes leaked out what looked like a swimming pool's worth of seawater, and he passed out once more.

For all of about ten minutes.

Before Martin could even get him back into bed, he sat bolt upright, skin seeming to melt slightly around the edges, eyes literally blazing, and an all-consuming fear of loss at the forefront of his mind.

It was a difficult one to find a solution to, and not only because Martin couldn’t touch him without burning himself, and god, burns really were his all-time least favourite type of pain. The big problem was, Jon had dealt with loss on an immense scale. He’d lost family, friends, homes, his own humanity - as a matter of fact there was very little he had been able to hold onto. As it happened though, all Martin really had to do was be present. Jon looked over at him, still mumbling incoherently about Tim and Sasha and a thousand other things that brought a lump to Martin’s throat. When he saw Martin though, he paused.

“You’re...still here…” His voice was rough and ragged, like he’d inhaled all the smoke that a burning house had to offer. Martin nodded, still trying to get his own emotions under control after the relentless barrage the last hour had been. Jon looked like he was concentrating very hard. “I...got you out...out of The Lonely…”

“You did Jon. You did.” Jon was silent again, before a single, steaming tear ran down his face and he smiled ever-so-slightly.

“I...didn’t lose you.” With that, the fires in the place of his eyes burned brighter and brighter, so bright Martin was forced to shield his eyes and blink away white spots. When he looked back though, the small scorch marks Jon had left where his skin touched were gradually fading, and Jon himself was once more unconscious.

A couple of hours later, Martin had to convince Jon that he was, in fact, Martin, before the theatre mask that had replaced his face fell away and shattered on the floor.

Sometime in the afternoon, Martin held him close as they both squeezed their eyes closed against the bright, blinding colours that covered Jon and filled his whole world. Once he was back to reality, they simply melted off of his skin and away to nothing on the bed, and even though they left no mark Martin was suddenly looking forward to changing the sheets when all of this was over.

As the evening rolled in, it brought The Corruption with it, and Jon covered in even more worm holes than he had been after Prentiss’s attack was almost enough to make him sick. Instead, with no idea what else to do, he’d run a nice warm bath filled to the brim with soap, and placed Jon firmly into it still fully clothed. He couldn’t say whether it was the cleanliness or the sheer shock of suddenly being submerged in water that had done it, but worms oozed from his skin and dissolved to nothingness in the water.

It was almost a full day before anything else happened, and Martin had started to worry. At first it had been nice to have a break between his boyfriend’s horribly traumatic delirious fear-trips. It had given him time to properly dry Jon and put him into yet another set of clean pyjamas, as well as ensure that absolutely no worms were left alive (old habits die hard) and tidy the place up a little. Eventually though, the fear set in. What if something was wrong, what if the last entity never showed up? He was assuming that The Eye had been purged with the statement, but if The Web never appeared, would Jon be trapped like that forever?

Finally though, it had happened.

He hadn’t even been there when it had happened. He’d just stepped out to get a drink, but when he came back, the door was shut and seemingly locked. Jon was muttering something inside the room, over and over, and with a jolt Martin realised he was reciting the entirety of ‘A Guest For Mr. Spider’. Jon had told him about his experience with the book quite early on during their time in the cottage, after Martin caught him hiding on top of the kitchen table from a large spider in the corner of the room. Once he realised that, Martin knew what he had to do. Standing before the door, he squared his shoulders and raised his hand.

Knock knock.

All at once, the muttering on the other side of the door went silent. Martin raised his hand again.

Knock knock.

This time Martin called out. “Jon? It’s me.” More silence. “Listen, I know you’re scared, but I also know you’re strong. You can beat this, you don’t have to live the rest of your life scared of Mr. Spider. But you have to choose to do it, you have to face it before you can move past it.” Martin knew he was playing a risky game, but it was all he could think to do from the other side of the door. “It’s your choice. You may not have been ready before, but I know you can do it. All you have to do is open the door.” There were footsteps at that, slow, steady and halting just the other side of the door. Nothing else happened.

One last try. Desperately hoping that Jon would open the door, desperately hoping he would let him in, Martin raised his hand again. Knock knock.

A moment passed.

And another.

And then, the door opened.

Jon stood on the other side, hair filled with cobwebs and trembling from head to toe, but the moment he saw Martin he flung himself at him with a gasp. He buried his face into Martin’s jumper and held himself there so firmly that it took Martin a moment to realise he was talking, repeating the same things over and over.

“He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone, we made him go away, he’s gone…” and as Martin held him close, the webs woven into his hair unravelled and floated away, fading away to nothing. His breathing finally settling, Jon stepped back and looked him firmly in the eyes, seeming more coherent than he had been in days. “I choose you. Not any one of them, not power or immortality or fear. I choose you.”

And really, after the last few days, how was Martin supposed to NOT kiss him at that point?

-

For all intents and purposes, Jonathan Sims was human again. Not an avatar, neither Archivist nor Archive. Just a human. He couldn’t See things, or Know things, couldn’t heal from wounds in a matter of seconds or rip trauma out of people. He didn’t dream of other people’s fears, or hunger for statements, and was unpleasantly surprised to remember that for humans, eating actual food and sleeping at night were requirements as opposed to preferences.

Eventually, they’d contacted Basira, and it turned out that Jon wasn’t the only one who had suffered after his rejection of the ritual. It seemed that in putting his words into Jon’s mouth, Elias, or Jonah, or ‘the king of a ruined world’ had tied himself inextricably to the ritual. When the ritual failed...no-one was quite sure what had happened, but according to his autopsy, his body had been entirely filled with black ink. Lungs, veins, stomach, everything. Without him to worry about, nothing was keeping her from dedicating all of her time to tracking down Daisy, and apparently she was following up a really promising lead around Bodmin Moor.

After they’d hung up, Martin had turned to Jon.

“So...what now?” Jon though for a moment, before laughing quietly.

“You know, I have absolutely no idea.” His smile was blissful, and Martin couldn’t help but beam back. “If I had to guess though, I would say what comes next is whatever we choose to do. So…” He squeezed Martin’s hand. “Where should we start?”

Martin made a big show of thinking for a long moment, before shrugging and suggesting “Lunch?” Jon had smiled, squeezed his hand, and begun walking further into town, where they knew (not Knew, never Knew again) that there was a lovely little cafe that sold excellent sandwiches. And just like that, hand in hand, they walked towards a future that they had fought for. One that they had chosen for themselves.


End file.
